Server browser skill
lwf
Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58311Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58311Members, Constellation
I'm not that very happy with how the server browser presents skill since the Hive stats changes, so I made some changes and am looking for others think, or if it's just me being grumpy. Then I discovered more than I was looking to do and ranted a bit.
To take this screenshot I set my skill to 750 and sorted by skill. This is the vanilla sorting which sorts servers by skill relative to your own.
Here the skill my skill is also set to 750 and sorted by skill, but sorted simply by server skill.
Personally I find the vanilla sorting messy. Instead, sorting only by server skill is complemented nicely by the icons which makes it more obvious what they mean and easy to read, in my opinion. What do you think?
Unfortunately though I believe the arrows are useless to the majority of players at this time. I don't think many players has around 750 skill. All old players started at 1000 and most have a higher skill than that but all new players since the sale starts with a skill of 0, making 750 my guess at an about average skill, but that despite being an average it's a skill no one has since the gaps are gigantic, commonly ranging between 0 and 1500. The Hive stats are currently entirely broken in my opinion because of this and the lack of a recalculation of skill after the algorithm was changed (the first time!), but that's really another matter. The server browser and the Hive works closely together but these are still different issues.
So if your skill is not just between abysmally low and common veteran skill, the browser is all double red arrows down/up, only with occasional useful data, even though the skill range between servers are huge. Example, with a mod to show the average skill on the server on hover (more opinions, is this a good thing?):
Edit: Also, those tooltips are really difficult to read, they would benefit greatly from more solid background.
Vanilla sorting works as well in this case though, because, well, it just doesn't do much of anything. 99%, in that case 100%, of servers will be higher or lower (and only one of them) than your own skill, so it's the same as simple server skill sorting.
This isn't helped by the quirk of the arrow being selected by a fraction of your skill, and a fraction of your skill is much smaller when your skill is between 0 to 50 than 1000 to 2000. That probably isn't wrong, but in this case it just isn't useful either. So even if you're a badass enough rookie to reach 100 skill, that rookie server that kicks experienced players automatically will still show up the just same as the highest average skilled servers.
To take this screenshot I set my skill to 750 and sorted by skill. This is the vanilla sorting which sorts servers by skill relative to your own.
Here the skill my skill is also set to 750 and sorted by skill, but sorted simply by server skill.
Personally I find the vanilla sorting messy. Instead, sorting only by server skill is complemented nicely by the icons which makes it more obvious what they mean and easy to read, in my opinion. What do you think?
Unfortunately though I believe the arrows are useless to the majority of players at this time. I don't think many players has around 750 skill. All old players started at 1000 and most have a higher skill than that but all new players since the sale starts with a skill of 0, making 750 my guess at an about average skill, but that despite being an average it's a skill no one has since the gaps are gigantic, commonly ranging between 0 and 1500. The Hive stats are currently entirely broken in my opinion because of this and the lack of a recalculation of skill after the algorithm was changed (the first time!), but that's really another matter. The server browser and the Hive works closely together but these are still different issues.
So if your skill is not just between abysmally low and common veteran skill, the browser is all double red arrows down/up, only with occasional useful data, even though the skill range between servers are huge. Example, with a mod to show the average skill on the server on hover (more opinions, is this a good thing?):
Edit: Also, those tooltips are really difficult to read, they would benefit greatly from more solid background.
Vanilla sorting works as well in this case though, because, well, it just doesn't do much of anything. 99%, in that case 100%, of servers will be higher or lower (and only one of them) than your own skill, so it's the same as simple server skill sorting.
This isn't helped by the quirk of the arrow being selected by a fraction of your skill, and a fraction of your skill is much smaller when your skill is between 0 to 50 than 1000 to 2000. That probably isn't wrong, but in this case it just isn't useful either. So even if you're a badass enough rookie to reach 100 skill, that rookie server that kicks experienced players automatically will still show up the just same as the highest average skilled servers.